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By Root 1623 0

uniquely complex ability to create symbols. Symbols allow us to understand the world, and are the primary means by which we create social and psychological relationships. Human interaction is a symphony of symbolic gestures of which language is just a small part. Physicality, intonation, facial expression, volume, and body language play an important role in our ability to interrelate and understand the intention behind the words we use. In the days before electric communication (telegraph and telephone), the majority of our communication took place face-to-face. We were generally able to look someone in the eye and interpret what he or she was telling us. Over the past 75 years or so, technology systematically removed many of these interpersonal behavioral cues from our dominant modes of interaction. First the telegraph and then the telephone allowed us to hook up more easily—but only partly, as many symbolic social cues were missing. The slower pace of change characteristic of the industrial age, however, gave us time to adapt to these new modes of communication and to develop the new symbol decoding ability they demanded of us. Still, we never came to fully trust them. The unwritten rule was that much could be accomplished on the telephone, but when it came down to really important communications, nothing beat looking someone in the eye and shaking that person’s hand.

Step back for a moment and think about the myriad and fantastic ways business communicates in the twenty-first century: e-mail, instant messaging, cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), text messages. Each mediates our message in subtly different ways, distorting some parts, magnifying and diminishing others. Each technology works like a filter allowing some symbols to pass through and others to be left behind. Now think about how fast these changes have come upon us. E-mail, as strange as it is to think now, has been with most of us for around a decade. In the mid-1990’s, some of us wore numeric pagers, and if we even had a cell phone, it was often larger than this book.

When we communicate electronically, we communicate less dynamically, with less give-and-take. Electronic communication tends to be unidirectional and sequential. When it does overlap, like in an instant message chat, it often ceases to make sense:

MarkTheCEO [11:16 AM]: Hi Cindy.

CindyCEOAssist [11:16 AM]: Hello Mark.

MarkTheCEO [11:16 AM]: RU prepared for the mtg w/ counsel?

CindyCEOAssist [11:16 AM]: Think so.

MarkTheCEO [11:17 AM]: Think so? I hope so. Can you brief me on our client’s situation?

CindyCEOAssist [11:19 AM]: You don’t believe I’ve been working on it?

MarkTheCEO [11:20 AM]: I’m seeing them in five minutes.

CindyCEOAssist [11:20 AM]: They broke the contract on many levels, but they are claiming that we made it impossible for them to fulfill the contract.

MarkTheCEO [11:20 AM]: Of course I believe you.

CindyCEOAssist [11:20 AM]: Well, not we, but us. I mean not me, but you and your board.

CindyCEOAssist [11:20 AM]: It’s your rescision.

MarkTheCEO [11:20 AM]: I apologize.

MarkTheCEO [11:21 AM]: So, we are going to sue them for breach of contract.

CindyCEOAssist [11:21 AM]: No problem. I’ll go set up the conference room.

MarkTheCEO [11:21 AM]: Rescision?

Auto response from CindyCEOAssist [11:21 AM]: CINDY is online but may be away from the service right now.

MarkTheCEO [11:21 AM]: I’m not sure I understand. What rescision?

MarkTheCEO [11:22 AM]: Hello? Are you still there? The video conference is in three minutes!

Though we now work more cooperatively, like pieces on a chessboard, the electronic communication that passes between us is a game of incomplete information, more like poker than chess. In chess, both players can see complete information about the game. In poker, you can only see the cards that are face up. But unlike poker, the goal of most of our communication is not to confuse our opponent but rather to be clear with our partner; we want, to varying degrees, to put